


Ships in the Night

by Todesengel



Series: Arc o' Whore!Keith [2]
Category: Voltron: Lion Voltron
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-04-12
Updated: 2005-04-12
Packaged: 2017-10-23 04:35:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/246325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Todesengel/pseuds/Todesengel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're just ships passing in the night</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ships in the Night

When it ended, Pidge reminded himself that it was only chance which had allowed it to even begin. What it was, was that they'd been two ships stranded on the same iceberg. Two ships with water leaking into their holds and their crew abandoning them and, right at that moment, they'd needed each other to get off the berg and into the dock. That's what it started out as and that was certainly how it ended, and it didn't matter if, in the middle, there had been something more than a mutual need to forget the pain that ripped into them from stem to stern.

There were conditions, of course, that they'd respected all the way through. They never asked who caused the pain. And they never said words that gave weight to their arrangement and that, maybe, had been why they parted.

At first, it was because words like 'I like you' and 'I want to be with you' and 'I hurt when you're gone' were pointless -- it was just sex. Well, no, it wasn't even that at first. Lance was too inexperienced, too shy to do much more than kiss and hold hands and -- when they were alone in Pidge's too empty room -- to reach down and touch Pidge's cock with such fear, such wonder, such arousing shame that it was mostly enough for Pidge.

At the beginning, the words that could describe them were 'I'm comfortable around you' and 'I'm attracted to you' and 'I don't mind when you share my space'. Which was perfect for what they had and what they needed, since all they were, were two ships whose wounds happened to match, who could stand together and keep the water out as they limped their way home. And if, sometimes, Lance would bring Pidge dinner, or carry him to bed, or hold his hand while they napped together, it didn't mean anything. It was all part of their mutual support. And if, sometimes, Pidge forgot about Chip and found himself sitting in class and wondering where Lance was, well, that was normal too. It didn't mean anything.

It was never supposed to mean anything.

The middle bit, where they were out at sea and all alone, maybe that was where those words could have been said, when the bitterness of the beginning had mellowed. The middle had been the best and if he'd been asked Pidge could have pointed to the exact that moment when it began. He would always know when he first thought of Lance not as a replacement for Chip, but as his lover.

It had been spring. And Pidge had walked into his room and Lance had been waiting for him, on his bed, and it had looked right. It had looked right and the rightness of this scene -- of the fact that Lance was on his bed and not Chip -- was as sharp as the keen of a tungsten wire on the verge of snapping.

Pidge had stopped just inside the room, mostly from the shock. Lance had sat up, twisting the corner of the sheet he had wrapped around himself, nibbling at his lip, his face a picture of nervousness at Pidge's sudden lack of movement. "Pidge?"

"Yes?" Pidge had smiled, then, just a little, and it must have made Lance even more nervous because he flushed becomingly.

"Pidge, please..."

It was the please that made him move, and he hadn't meant to be cruel, but at that moment he had honestly not known what it was the Lance asked for. "Please, what?"

"Please --" Lance had lowered his voice, and dropped the sheet, letting Pidge see the gentle curve of his collarbone, the play of his muscles across his ribs, the way the blush of his cheeks was echoed in the flush of his cock. "P-please, fuck me? Now?"

They could have used 'love' in the middle bit, after that, but they didn't, for fear that labeling this thing for what it was would destroy it.

The middle lasted for a while. Long enough that Lance only blushed a little bit when he knelt before Pidge and took his cock in his mouth. Long enough that it didn't take them twenty minutes just to get Lance ready--twenty minutes of gentle stretching and Pidge getting hornier and hornier because he'd never expected Lance to look so...sweet like this. And though he missed the innocence (if not the fumbling) that Lance had at the beginning, he could always bring back the blush by rimming Lance, who was still so embarrassed at the thought of Pidge licking there. The middle lasted so long that Pidge forgot the beginning, forgot that they were together because they happened to break at the same time. He forgot that they'd never said love, not once, and that Lance had been kept sheltered for so long.

He forgot that, while they happened to be traveling at the same pace and in the same direction for the moment, they'd arrived there from two different starting points. They weren’t converging lines but two separate graphs who happened to share a few coordinates for a time.

Their divergence came quickly and sharply. It happened in the spring, again -- or perhaps early summer -- when it was really too hot to fuck, but they did it anyway. Pidge thought that the fact that they lay together when they could barely move -- that even this discomfort was comforting -- meant something and so he'd been less discreet than he should have. But it felt so comfortable to lie there on the floor, melting from heat and pleasure, and feel Lance's pulse beat in counterpoint to his. It felt so comfortable that he forgot that Lance wasn't Chip, and didn't already know about the Academy's secrets.

It had been a stupid mistake. A stupid mistake because there was no way Lance could know, no way anyone would proposition _Lance_. No mere Academy instructor would dare any whisper of that coming back to his father.

But it was too late by the time he remembered, and the idle "Hey, you know Instructor--" was already out in the open and couldn't be erased, and Lance was looking at him with his liquid brown eyes, confusion at the way Pidge had bit back what he was going to say beginning to cloud his face.

"Pidge?" he asked, and it wasn't as slow and idle as Pidge's slip. It was the way he asked for sex, demanding yet unsure. And Pidge took too much meaning from that, as well. Thought that because Lance let himself be fucked in this heat, that because Lance asked for sex now, it meant the same thing as love.

He thought that this meant that Lance would believe him. And so he ploughed ahead, ignoring the warnings of his better sense. "Hey. You know that 'special training' that some of the others do?"

Lance curled closer, pulled playfully at his curls, and Pidge misinterpreted that as well. "Yeah - nobody's ever given me a straight answer…?"

"It's how some of us rank and file pay for our training…"

It was the way Lance stilled, still holding onto a curl, that told Pidge this was the end. The hoarse, whispered "No" hadn't been necessary at all.

Pidge didn't say anything. There was no need to say anything. Lance's reactions were enough to drive home the ending, and so he didn't try to hold on to Lance when Lance pulled away; didn't try to stop Lance when he rose and yanked his clothes on so fast that he put his pants on backwards; didn't show his pain when Lance looked _through_ him, wearing his glossy media mask.

"I… catch you later?" And Lance was gone.

His absence was shocking in its suddenness, like the ripping off of a scab, and Pidge thought that he would bleed forever. Bleed from the wound Lance left and the wound Lance had patched.

It was suddenly cold, but Pidge didn't pull the sheets around his naked body. They still smelled like Lance, and that was the last thing he wanted right now. Instead, he took a shower and, afterwards, when he was dry, took apart Chip's computer. He drowned himself in the meaningless work; better this than drowning himself in another person, letting someone else by his bandage. It hurt but maybe he was harder, now, or built better, because he could see the lesson, this time.

Nothing lasted.

He would remember that.

**Author's Note:**

> Set pre-Amazing Grace, during the VF's time at the Academy. It should be noted that I meant this fic to imply (a) that both Pidge and Lance are minors, and (b) Pidge and Chip were in an incestuous relationship.


End file.
